Havana Blue

by Leonardo Padura

  He climbed on the platform and displayed a dazzling smile. Colgate, Skinny must have thought, but I didn’t yet know the skinny lad behind me in the line. To get to be student president he must have been in twelfth or thirteenth grade, I later found out he was in thirteenth, and he was tall, almost fair-haired, with very light-coloured eyes – a faded ingenuous blue – and seemed freshly washed, combed, shaved, perfumed and out of bed and, despite his distance from us and the heat, he oozed self-confidence, when, by way of starting his speech, he introduced himself as Rafael Morín Rodríguez, president of the Student Federation of the René O. Reiné High School and a member of the Municipal Youth Committee. I remember him, the sun that gave me such a bad head and the rest, and thinking that that guy was a born leader: he talked and talked.

  The lift doors opened slowly like the curtain in a fleapit, and only then did Lieutenant Mario Conde realize he wasn’t viewing that scene through dark glasses. His headache had almost gone, but the familiar image of Rafael Morín stirred recollections he’d thought lost in the dankest corners of his memory. The Count liked remembering, he had a shit-hot memory, Skinny used to say, but he’d have preferred another reason to remember. He walked along the corridor, feeling like sleep, not work, and when he came to the Boss’s office he fixed his pistol, which was about to drop from his belt.

  Maruchi, the woman in charge of the Boss’s office, had deserted the reception area, and he reckoned she must be on her mid-morning break. He tapped on the glass door, opened it and saw Major Antonio Rangel behind his desk. He was listening carefully to something someone was telling him on the telephone, while stress made him shift his cigar from one side of his mouth to the other. His eyes pointed the Count to the file open on his desk. The lieutenant shut the door and sat opposite his chief, waiting for the conversation to end. The major raised his eyebrows, uttered a laconic “agreed, agreed, yes, this afternoon” and hung up.

  He then anxiously examined the battered end of his Davidoff. He had hurt the cigar; cigars are jealous, he used to say, and the taste would certainly no longer be the same. Smoking and looking younger were his two favourite occupations, and he devoted himself to both like a conscientious craftsman. He would proudly announce he was fifty-eight years old, while his face smiled an unwrinkled smile, and he stroked his fakir’s stomach, wore his belt tight, the grey in his sideburns seemingly a youthful caprice, and spent his free late afternoons between swimming pool and squash court, where he also took his cigars for company. And the Count felt deeply envious: he knew that at sixty – if I ever made it – he’d be disagreeably old and arthritic; hence he envied the major’s exuberance, he didn’t even cough on his cigars and into the bargain knew all the tricks to being a good chief who could switch from the very pleasant to the very demanding just like that. The voice is mirror to the soul, the Count always thought when decoding the shades of tone and gravity with which the major layered his conversations. But he now had a damaged Davidoff on his hands and an account to settle with a subordinate, and he switched to one of his worst varieties of tone of voice.

  “I don’t want to discuss what happened this morning, but I won’t stand for it again. Before I met you I didn’t have high blood pressure, and you’re not going to see me off with a heart attack. That’s not why I swim so many lengths and sweat like a pig on the squash court. I’m your superior and you’re a policeman, write that on your bedroom wall so you don’t forget it even when you’re asleep. And the next time I’ll kick your balls in, right? And look at the time, five past ten, what more need I say?”

  The Count looked down. A couple of good jokes came to mind, but he knew this wasn’t the moment. In fact, it never was with the Boss, but even so he chanced his luck too often.

  “You said your son-in-law gave you that Davidoff as a present, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, a box of twenty-five on New Year’s Eve. But don’t change the subject, I know you only too well,” and he scrutinized yet again his cigar’s smoky demise, as if he understood nothing. “I’ve ruined this fellow . . . Well, I just spoke to the minister for industry. He’s very worried about this business. I felt he was really shaken. He says Rafael Morín held an important post in one of the management divisions in his ministry and that he worked with lots of foreign businessmen, and he wants to avoid any possible scandal.” He paused to suck on his cigar. “This is all we have for the moment,” he added as he pushed the file towards his subordinate.

  The Count picked up the file but didn’t open it. He sensed it could be a replica of Pandora’s dreadful box and preferred not to be the one to release the demons from the past.

  “Why did you decide on me in particular for this case?” he then asked.

  The Boss sucked on his cigar again. He seemed optimistic his cigar would make a surprise recovery: a pale, even healthy ash was forming, and he puffed gently, just enough so each drag didn’t fan the flame or sear the cigar’s sensitive entrails.

  “I’m not going to say, as I did some time ago, because you’re the best or because you’re fucking lucky and things always turn right for you. Don’t imagine that for one minute, never again, OK? How’d do you feel if I say I chose you because I just felt like it or because I prefer having you around here and not at your place dreaming of novels you’ll never write or because this is a shit case anyone could solve? Select the option you prefer and put a tick by it.”

  “I’ll stick with the one you don’t want to mention.”

  “That’s your problem. All right? Look, there’s an officer in every province responsible for searching out Morín. Here’s a copy of the statement, the orders that went out yesterday and the list of people who can work with you. I’ve allotted you Manolo again . . . These are the man’s details, a photo and a short biography written by his wife.”

  “Where it says he’s squeaky clean.”

  “I know you don’t like the squeaky clean of this world but too bloody bad. It does appear he is an immaculate trustworthy comrade and nobody has the slightest idea where he’s holed up or what’s happened to him, though I fear the worst . . . Hey, you interested?” he thundered, suddenly changing his tone of voice.

  “He’s left the country?”

  “Very unlikely. Besides, there were only two attempts yesterday, and both failed. The north wind is a bastard.”

  “Hospitals?”

  “Nothing, naturally, Mario.”

  “Hotels?”

  The Boss shook his head and leaned his elbows on his desk. Perhaps he was getting bored.

  “Political asylum in bars, brothels or clandestine hostelries?”

  He finally smiled, his lip barely flinching above his cigar.

  “Piss off, Mario, but remember what I said: the next time I’ll do you proper, on charges for disrespect and whatever.”

  Lieutenant Mario Conde stood up. Picked up the file in his left hand, straightened his pistol and gave a half-hearted military salute. He had just started to swing round when Major Rangel rehearsed another of his changes of voice and tone, seeking a rare balance that denoted both persuasiveness and curiosity: “Mario, let me first ask you two questions.” And rested his head on his hands. “My boy, tell me once and for all: why did you join the force?”

  The Count looked the Boss in the eye as if he’d not understood something. He knew the latter found his mix of indifference and efficiency disconcerting and liked to relish that minimal superiority.

  “I don’t know, Chief. I’ve spent the last twelve years trying to find out, and I still don’t know why. And what’s your other question?”

  The major stood up and walked round his desk. Smoothed the top to his uniform, a jacket with stripes and epaulettes that looked fresh from the dry cleaner’s. He reviewed the lieutenant’s trousers, shirt and face.

  “Since you are a policeman, why not start dressing like one, hey? And why not shave properly? Look at yourself, you look sick.”

  “You’ve asked three questions, Major. You want three answers?”
r />   The Boss smiled and shook his head.

  “No, I want you to find Morín. I’m really not interested in why you joined the force and even less in why you don’t ditch those faded trousers. I want this sorted quickly. I don’t like ministers pressurizing me,” he added, mechanically returned his military salute, went back to his desk and watched Lieutenant Mario Conde depart.

  SUBJECT: MISSING PERSON

  Informant: Tamara Valdemira Méndez

  Private address: Santa Catalina,1187, Santos Suárez,

  Havana City

  ID Card: 56071000623

  Occupation: Dentist

  Case Outline: At 21.35 hours on Thursday 1 January 1989 the informant presented herself in this station to report the disappearance of citizen Rafael Morín Rodríguez, the informant’s husband and resident at the above address, ID 52112300565, and following physical features white skin, light brown hair, blue eyes, approximately five foot nine inches tall. The informant explained that, it being the early hours of 1 January and after being at a party where she and her friends and work colleagues had seen in the New Year, the informant returned home accompanied by the said Rafael Morín Rodríguez and that after checking that their mutual son was asleep in his bedroom with the informant’s mother, they went to their bedroom and got into bed, and that the following morning, when the informant woke up, citizen Rafael Morín had already left the house, but that initially she was not particularly worried because he often went out without saying where he was going. Around midday, the informant, by now rather concerned, telephoned a few friends and work colleagues as well as the enterprise where Rafael Morín Rodríguez works, without eliciting any information as to his whereabouts. And by this stage she was really worried, since citizen Rafael Morín hadn’t used the car that was his property (Lada 2107, number-plate HA11934), or the company car, which was in the garage. By the late afternoon, and accompanied by citizen René Maciques Alba, workcolleague of the Missing Person, they phoned several hospitals to no avail and then visited others they’d been unable to communicate with via phone, with equally negative outcomes. At 21.00 hours, the informant and citizen René Maciques Alba presented themselves in this station with a view to making this statement on the disappearance of citizen Rafael Morín Rodríguez. Duty Officer: Sgt. Lincoln Capote.

  Report Number: 16 – 0101 – 89

  Station Chief: First Lieut. Jorge Samper.

  Annexe 1: Photograph of the Missing Man

  Annexe 2: The Missing Man’s personal and work

  details.

  Initiate investigation. Raise to priority level 1, Provin-

  cial Headquarters Havana C.

  He visualized Tamara making her statement and looked back at the photo of the man who’d disappeared. It was like a talisman stirring up distant days and hidden melancholies he’d often tried to forget. It must be recent, the card was shiny, but he could be twenty and would still be the same. You sure? Sure: he seemed impervious to the sorrows of this life and urbane even on his passport photos, always untouched by sweat, acne or fat or the dark threat of stubble, always that air of a perfect pristine angel. Yet now he’d gone missing, was almost a spit-ordinary police case, one more job he’d have preferred to pass on. “What the hell is up, mother?” he wondered and abandoned his desk with no desire to read the report on the personal and work details of squeaky clean Rafael Morín. From the window in his little cubby hole he enjoyed a vista that seemed quite impressionistic, comprising the street lined by ancient laurel trees, a diffuse green smudge in the sunlight yet able to refresh his sore eyes, an unimportant world whose every secret and change he noted: a new sparrows’ nest, a branch beginning to wither, a variation in foliage highlighted by the darkness of that diffuse, perpetual green. Behind the trees, a church with high wrought-iron grilles and smooth walls, a few glimpses of other buildings and the very distant sea that could only be perceived as a light or distant smell. The street was empty and hot and his head was fuzzy and empty; he thought how he’d like to sit beneath those laurels, to be sixteen again, to have a dog to stroke and a girlfriend to wait for; then, seated there as ingenuously as possible, he’d play at feeling very happy, as he had almost forgotten you could be happy, and perhaps he’d even succeed in reshaping his past, that would then be his future, and logically calculate what life was going to be like. He was delighted by the idea of such a calculation because he’d try to make it different: there couldn’t be a repeat of the long chain of errors and coincidences that had shaped his existence; there must be some way to change it or at least break out and try another formula, in reality another life. His stomach seemed to have settled, and now he wanted a clear head to get into a case that had emerged from his past to plague the sweet void he’d dreamed of for the weekend. He pressed the red intercom button and asked for Sergeant Manuel Palacios. Perhaps he could be like Manolo, he thought, and then thought how lucky it was people like Manolo existed, able to cheer up routine days at work just by their optimistic presence. Manolo was a good friend, acceptably discreet and quietly ambitious, and the Count preferred him to all the sergeants and assistant detectives at headquarters.

  He saw the shadow loom against the glass in his door, and Sergeant Manuel Palacios walked in without knocking.

  “I didn’t think you’d got here yet . . .” he said and sat down in one of the chairs opposite the Count’s desk. “This is no life, my friend. Fuck, you look really half-asleep.”

  “You can’t imagine how plastered I got last night. Terrible . . .” – and he felt himself shudder simply at the memory. “It was old Josefina’s birthday, and we started on beer that I’d got hold of, then we downed a red wine, half-shitty Rumanian plonk that goes down well nevertheless, and Skinny and I finished up tangling with a quart of vintage rum he was supposedly giving to his mother as a present. I almost died when the Boss rang.”

  “Maruchi says he was livid with you because you hung up on him,” smiled Manolo as he settled down in the chair. He was only just twenty-five and clearly threatened by scoliosis: no seat felt right for his scrawny buttocks, and he couldn’t stand still for very long. He had long arms, a lean body and loped like an invertebrate; of all the Count’s acquaintances he was the only one able to bite his elbow and lick his nose. He seemed to float along, and on sighting him one might think he was weak, even fragile and certainly much younger than he tried to appear.

  “Fact is the Boss is stressed out. He also gets calls from his superiors.”

  “This is a big deal, right? Otherwise he personally wouldn’t have phoned me.”

  “More like heavy duty. Take this with you,” he said, placing the items back in the file. “Read this, and we’ll leave in half an hour. Give me time to think how we should tackle it.”

  “You still into thinking, Count?” asked the sergeant as he made a lithe exit from the office.

  The Count looked back at the street and smiled. He was still thinking, and thought was now a time bomb. He went over to the telephone, dialled, and the metallic ring reminded him of his drastic awakening that morning.

  “Hello,” said someone.

  “Jose, it’s me.”

  “Hey, what state did you wake up in, my boy?” the woman asked, and he felt she at least was cheerful.

  “Best forgotten, but it was a good birthday party, wasn’t it? How’s the beast?”

  “Still not up.”

  “Some people are so lucky.”

  “Hey, what’s up? Where you calling from?”

  He sighed and looked back out at the street before replying. The sun in the blue sky was still beating down. It was a made-to-measure Saturday, two days before he’d closed a currency fraud case in which the endless questioning had exhausted him, and he’d intended to sleep in every morning till Monday. And then that man went missing.

  “From my incubator, Jose,” he complained, referring to his tiny office. “They got me up early. There’s no justice for the just, my dear, I swear there ain’t.”

  “So you
won’t be coming for lunch?”

  “I don’t think so. But what’s that I can smell down the telephone?”

  The woman smiled. She’s always laughing, great.

  “Your loss, my boy.”

  “Something special?”

  “No, nothing special but really delicious. Get this: I cooked the malangas you bought in a sauce and added plenty of garlic and bitter orange; some pork fillets left over from yesterday, imagine they’re almost marinated and there’s two apiece; the black beans are getting nice and squashy, like you lot like them, they’re getting real tasty, and now I’ll add a spot of the Argentine olive oil I bought in the corner store; I’ve lowered the flame under the rice, and have added more garlic, as advised by that Nicaraguan pal of yours. And salad: lettuce, tomato and radishes. Oh, well, and coconut jam with grated cheese . . . You died on me, Condesito?”

  “Just my fucking luck, Jose,” he replied, feeling his battered gut realigning. He was mad about big meals, would die for a menu like that and knew Josefina was preparing the meal especially for him and for Skinny and that he’d have to miss it. “Hey, I don’t want to talk to you no more. Put Skinny on the line, wake him up, get him up, the skunky drunk . . .”

  “Tell me the company you keep . . .” Josefina laughed and put the telephone down. He’d known her for twenty years and never seen her look defeated or resigned even in the worst of times. The Count admired and loved her, sometimes much more tangibly than his own mother, with whom he’d never identified or trusted as he’d trusted the mother of Skinny Carlos who was no longer skinny.